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| Cover of Meggysey's controversial book |
I've been on quite a Dick Cavett kick lately and today while watching three episodes of his talk show that featured Janis Joplin, I was wonderfully surprised by an incredibly articulate (and left-winged) American footballer who was promoting his controversial book Out of Their League. Dave Meggyesy left at the height of his career as an outside linebacker for the St. Louis Cardinals in order to address and expose the dehumanizing aspects of the game. The man never gave up on the sport that he loved but tried to improve it and promote player welfare through his work with the NFLPA and Athletes United for Peace. Once Meggysey mentioned to Cavett that he grew up in a cowtown where the cows actually came to watch his high school football games, I had a feeling that he grew up in Ohio. It turns out this this is indeed the case and that Meggyesy (born in Cleveland) grew up on a pig farm in Glenwillow, Ohio and attended Solon High School. This amusing and quaint actuality about the spectator cows is not a strange concept to those of us who have grown up in a small Midwestern town but something about Meggysey seemed distinctly Ohioan to me. Perhaps it was simply his apparent lack of an accent or the fact that even Ohio's capital city is referred to as Cowtown but I think there's something more binding about the innate characteristics of Ohioans, which I may never actually put my finger on. Yet, I like to think that Ohioans, especially those of the Northeastern variety, question the status quo and try to make positive changes to systems from the inside out.
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